Flavors Fresh From the Garden: Blackberry and Peach Tart

A few months back I announced I was going to be starting a cooking project where I made traditional Southern items, would video tape it, and put up for the whole world to see/judge me.

I did ONE video and then life happened and I got distracted. Whoops.

However, now- NOW I’m actually following through on a cooking project. For a few reasons: one, I haven’t video taped it and so less chance of looking ridiculous and two, it’s using items from my garden- and I am LOATHE to waste food and since it’s in my garden I’m more likely to go ahead and make myself use it. As opposed to going to the store and buying items and what not.

I’ve already written one blog post on this here- about the Summer Salad I made with cucumbers and tomatoes. This post will be about the blackberry and peach tart I made.

The blackberries I have grown myself using a blackberry bush/vine I got from Johnson’s last year. One thing the pandemic did do for me was to make me super scared about food supplies and more passionate about growing my own, especially from trees and such that will return each year. Where I goofed up is I guess I didn’t ask if the blackberry plant was a bush and planted it in a spot that would work for a bush…. but it’s more like a vine and I now need to build a trellis for it. However that’s a project I’ll assign to my boyfriend!

The peaches were a gift from my friend Julia who had posted to her Instagram that she had way too many and was looking to give them away. Now I should note these are white peaches, and Julia let me know that white peaches are sweeter than the usual ones we pick up at the grocery store, which meant in her opinion they were best for baking and what not. So I set about to make my first tart… ever… making my first crust… ever. Yikes!

I went over to Pinterest to find some ideas and found two sets that I thought were helpful. The first item, linked here, was great but it didn’t tell me how to make the dough (I guess she used store bought). So I pulled up this link to get a dough recipe.

I made the dough first- thankfully my guy had a food processor (I do most of my cooking at his house because he’s got a bigger kitchen and it honestly photographs better haha) so I was able to dig that out. I’ve literally never used Crisco in my life until I met this man, and apparently you can use shortening in a pie dough, and I’ve done a lot of cooking at his house so I had all of the ingredients on hand. Although to be fair, he’s got a stupid amount of flour and cornmeal in his house from cooking himself.

DIRECTIONS with food processor

1. Add the flour with the salt and sugar (if using), and pulse twice in the food processor. Here I also added chopped up bits of rosemary, I read in another post the idea of making savory as well as sweet doughs and thought the rosemary would make a nice contrast with the sweetness of the filling.

2. Add in the butter and shortening and pulse until mixture is crumbly, add in ice water and vinegar over the mixture and pulse a few more times until the dough starts to come together.

3. Remove from the food processor and turn out onto a clean surface. Knead dough very lightly just to make everything come together. The directions say to not overwork but I am honestly not sure at what point that happens. I may have done it.

4. Form the dough into 2 disks and wrap, sit in fridge. It can last up to two days according to what I read.

Now I will note… I think I made mine too thick. But once everything baked the filling actually was quite lovely even with the thick crust. But it was a little dry where there wasn’t filling.

While the dough sat and chilled I went to work on the filling.

DIRECTIONS for filling & baking

1. Put slides peaches and blackberries in a bowl, add the sugar and lemon juice. Stir and let sit for a few minutes.

2. Strain the juice into a mixing cup until you get 1/3rd cup… although in hindsight I think a little more would have been better. This is also why I did 3 tablespoons of juice and not two like the original Pinterest directions.

3. Put the juice and water into a small saucepan, add cornstarch to thicken. Don’t let it overheat like I did! Whoops!

4. Put sauce back into the bowl with the peaches and blackberries, coat the fruit. Add chopped rosemary if you want.

5. Get crust/dough out of fridge- coat with beaten egg *I forgot this step at first and put the egg coating on after it had been in the oven for a few minutes. Dust pan with flour before putting dough onto it. Put fruit and sauce onto dough and fold over edges- now I’ll add that my edges didn’t easily fold over, this could be because I used a handmade flaky dough recipe but I think it still worked ok. You can also just pinch the dough into ridges. Sprinkle sugar on top and coat edges with egg here if you want.

6. Bake a 425, roughly 15-20 minutes. I actually let mine go another 10-15 minutes after that but I would say do this depending on how dark you want the crust. And, of course, let it cool before you cut and serve.

Voila! You’ve got a blackberry and peach tart that’s actually pretty easy to make, so long as you don’t over think it… like I did. And if your crust starts to crumble, like one of mine did, you can just scoop it all up into a bowl together- still eats the same!

Now I need more ideas for everything I’m growing- so let me know! I’ve got strawberries, blueberries, figs, lavender (the Spanish kind which is edible), rosemary, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and more. And if other friends out there want to trade hit me up! I love seeing what I can teach myself to cook. Til next time!